The idea of the American West stems from iconic images of gritty cowboys, dusty terrains, and tumbleweed towns. The West was expansive, wild, and lawless. With these myths in mind, David McGlynn writes about the American West and the people who inhabit it today. In McGlynn's stories, people don't struggle with lawlessness; they struggle with notions of order, belief, and faith. McGlynn may be one of the few writers exploring this collision of Western lifestyle with the struggle to locate meaning and the difficult questions that result from that process. We're discussing his first collection of stories, The End of the Straight and Narrow.—Original airdate: 4/10/2009